Page:Zanoni.djvu/60

30 "It is well," said he. "A simple heart may be its own best guide, and so, go on, and prosper. Adieu, fair singer."

"Adieu, Excellency; but," — and something she could not resist — an anxious, sickening feeling of fear and hope — impelled her to the question, "I shall see you again, shall I not, at San Carlo?"

"Not, at least, for some time. I leave Naples to-day."

"Indeed!" and Viola's heart sank within her: the poetry of the stage was gone.

"And," said the cavalier, turning back, and gently laying his hand on hers — "and, perhaps, before we meet, you may have suffered — known the first sharp griefs of human life — known how little what fame can gain, repays what the heart can lose; but be brave and yield not — not even to what may seem the piety of sorrow. Observe yon tree in your neighbour's garden. Look how it grows up, crooked and distorted. Some wind scattered the germ from which it sprang, in the clefts of the rock; choked up and walled round by crags and buildings, by nature and man, its life has been one struggle for the light — light which makes to that life the necessity and the principle : you see how it has writhed and twisted — how, meeting the barrier in one spot, it has laboured and worked, stem and branches, towards the clear skies at last. What has preserved it through each disfavour of birth and circumstances — why are its leaves as green and fair as those of the vine behind you, which, with all its arms,